1. Field
The present invention relates to electronic information exchange and, more particularly, to electronic information exchange using a buddy list.
2. Background Information
Buddy lists provide a mechanism by which people (called users or participants in the buddy list) may locate one another on a network. A buddy list allows users to identify other users who are currently on-line, and to retrieve connection addresses by which communication with those users may be accomplished. Collectively, a group of users who participate in a buddy list may be called the buddy group.
On the Internet, the connection address of a user is typically the user""s Internet Protocol (IP) address. The IP address, typically a digital sequence of numbers, is assigned dynamically each time a user goes online (i.e., each time the user creates a logical connection to the network). Buddy lists provide a way to associate a user-friendly name with a dynamically-assigned IP address.
Current buddy list implementations may provide a central xe2x80x9cidentityxe2x80x9d server to map user-friendly names with IP addresses. A user wishing to find others on the network may access the identity server and search for the others using their user-friendly names. A valid IP address associated with a name may indicate that the searched-for user is online. As more users access an identity server, the matching of names with IP addresses may-slow under the increased load. When an identity server fails, no name-to-IP matching may occur on that server. The identity server is typically coupled with a dedicated Internet connection, which may be expensive to maintain.
Current buddy list implementations may be vulnerable to infiltration by parties which are not intended participants in the buddy group. Infiltration may be accomplished using xe2x80x9cIP spoofingxe2x80x9d, in which a party assumes the IP address of an intended participant. Such implementations may not provide verification that a message signal originates from an intended participant in the buddy group.
A method of implementing a buddy list includes locating a second client communication address stored on a second server using a second server identification. The second client communication address is read from the second server using the second server identification to locate the second server. The second client is verified by requesting the second client to store a known value on a personal data area of the second server which is then read back.